


then haunt me

by allegedly_writing



Category: Saw (Movies)
Genre: Addiction, Canon Compliant, Complicated Relationships, Drug Use, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced miscarriage, we were robbed of their relationship in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:34:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28725930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allegedly_writing/pseuds/allegedly_writing
Summary: A series of moments from Jill and Amanda's relationship, from beginning to end. And a little bit after.
Relationships: Jill Tuck & Amanda Young
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	then haunt me

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes bitches think about Amanda and Jill's relationship and scream. It's me I'm bitches. Title is from Emily Bronte. This is canon compliant but I'm playing timing fast and loose. Hope y'all like it.

Jill meets Amanda for the first time about three years into running the homeward bound clinic. 

There’s nothing inherently noteworthy about her. She’s a scrap of a young woman in need of help, for the same reason all of her other patients needed help. The patch of needle marks spotting the crook of her arm is new. Jill knows her story and it too is unremarkable, sadly. Amanda went to prison, now she’s out and she wants control of her life back. She wants to be better, to be fixed. 

Jill shakes her head, the ones that come from prison always made her a little sadder. Chances are that’s where they would end back up, if she stopped seeing them show up at her clinic.

So, in her experience, she shouldn’t get attached. 

But there’s something about her, a vulnerability in her shaking and the slight way her ribs protrude, eyes sunken in their sockets, how pale she is. She oscillates between looking too old and too young for her age. Jill just wants to help her, and she tells her as much as they discuss her treatment plan. 

Amanda smiles thinly at her words. It’s not entirely genuine but it’s something. She can be helped, Jill can help her. It’s almost a promise. 

... 

Amanda relapses twice under Jill’s care. The first time is a month into her treatment. It’s part of the process. She knows that, knows the numbers are working against her and Amanda but she still feels that sting of disappointment every time. That she’s failing them. The needle marks leave Amanda with a nasty infection, painful and ugly, and Jill feels something within her twist in sympathy. 

But she pushes it down. Focuses on the white folds of the gauze wrap in front of her, spread with disinfectant. 

“I’m sorry.” Amanda whispers as Jill bandages the weeping needle marks that blanket her arms. She looks so broken, and maybe she is. 

“Relapsing is normal. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and it doesn’t mean you’ll never...get better.” She chooses her words carefully. 

Around the same time, she notices Amanda spending more time with Cecil and it definitely sets off more than one alarm bell. Cecil’s...not a great influence. And, as she’s privately admitted to John, her patience regarding his outbursts is beginning to wear thin. Especially considering she’s trying to balance work and her pregnancy, she doesn’t need any additional stress. 

Is it even her job to worry? No, but nobody else does that for Amanda. No family, no close bonds of any sort. It’s dangerous, but she makes the decision to indulge. 

... 

The second time Amanda relapses is four months later, when Jill is seven months into her pregnancy. It’s bad, like all relapses are bad, and Amanda is definitely spiraling quickly. There’s pain and sweating and shaking and Amanda’s sobs feel like a physical blow. 

“Help me! You said you could help me!” Amanda snaps. Jill feels helpless, speechless.

“I can help you, Amanda, these things just take time.” It’s true but it’s the wrong thing to say. Amanda shakes her head and leaves much worse than Jill has seen her in months.

It distracts her, throws her off balance in a way she’s not used to. Maybe that’s why when Cecil asks to be let back in, even though the clinic is closed, even though he’d left hours ago, she opens the door. 

She prefers not to think about everything that happens next. It’s a painful smear on her mind, both for the initial agony of loss and the knowledge that, without even knowing it, the minute right before was the last minute of her normal life. And she can never get that back. 

...

After she’s physically recovered enough to return to work, she doesn’t see Amanda for months. 

It’s a small drop in the bucket of sorrow she feels, already feeling scraped raw and hollow, but it’s there nonetheless. Just one more person she failed. 

She doesn’t get attached to any of her patients after that. She doesn’t have it in her. She passes the same doorway where she lay bleeding and screaming and pretends she doesn’t remember what it felt like. She sees them through relapses and successes and they come and go in an endless blur. 

A year passes. Things don’t feel any easier. 

Life goes on, until John shows up and asks for her time, just a few minutes. For some reason, she agrees to give it to him. 

... 

It’s every bit wonderful and painful to see Amanda again when John brings her. 

She looks so much better, the doctor in Jill picks up instantly that her skin doesn’t look so sickly, she’s gained a healthy amount of weight, she doesn’t look like she’s been using. But more importantly, she’s there, and Jill never thought she would see her again. Jill imagined she was in jail or worse, dead somewhere from another lethal relapse. 

But she’s there. Alive and there. John’s arms are around her and for just a moment she can pretend that everything’s okay, that nothings changed. 

Except that everything’s changed. John’s a killer and she has no idea what he’s made of Amanda. But the worst part is she can barely bring herself to care because she’s here and alive and… better. It’s a word she doesn’t often get to use in her line of work. 

“You once told me that she was a lost soul.” She had, hadn’t she? Amanda looks at John expectantly and Jill feels a thin needle of guilt push at her. Amanda no longer looks lost, but this isn’t exactly ‘found’ either.

“It works. It’s real. He helped me.” The look in Amanda’s eyes is just short of wonder. Jill meets John’s eyes and thinks, okay, okay. 

... 

Jill doesn’t know when she sees Amanda in the tunnels that it will be the last time. Maybe if she had, she would’ve said something. Maybe she would’ve said “I’m sorry.” Or “you deserve help that isn’t this.” Or something else, something else life changing or awe inspiring or completely, utterly meaningless. 

But, she didn’t say anything and she watched Amanda leave, not missing the guilty look she gives as she disappears down the tunnel. Does she sense how Jill feels for her? That sense of guilt, of obligation gone rotten after being left out too long. 

She’ll never know. She wishes she had found a way to ask. 

... 

Amanda’s death makes the news, as does John’s. Jill works the late shift that day and definitely doesn’t think about John or Amanda or the fact that all of John’s assets are now hers. She doesn’t think about the grave for her son and for her former husband. 

Two days later, an "anonymous" donor pays for Amanda Young to be buried at the local cemetery. A simple headstone with only her name, date of birth, and death on it. 

It feels like the least she can do, and it feels like nowhere near enough. 

... 

She holds the letter that Pamela Jenkins gave her and tries desperately to breath around the lump in her throat. The ice front she puts on begins to melt and all that’s underneath is the feeling of being scraped raw all over in. 

Anger and the thick seasick feeling of betrayal war within her. 

But more than anything there’s a deep, bitter sadness. Because no matter how she feels now, how angry she gets, it doesn’t matter. Gideon is still dead, Amanda is still dead, John is still dead. 

She’s alone. It's never hit her quite as hard as it does in that exact moment and the force of it nearly brings her to her knees. 

In the end, anger wins out, because feeling angry is better than feeling hopeless. She sets down the letter heavily and sighs. There’s still work to do. She can still help.


End file.
